Romney's Redistribution Magic Trick Is Nothing New

It's a common word. One you find around the house every day. Today's secret word is: "redistribute." All together now: "RE-dis-tri-bute." Very good, class. Sean will now pass out cookies.

You really have to admire the way Willard Romney has so completely become comfortable within the hive mind. He gets beaten like a drum for dismissing half the country he's allegedly asking to vote for him — including the old, the lame, the blind, the crippled, and everyone who got that way during a war — on a tape from only last May. So, when some enterprising citizen journalists dig up and barber a 14-year-old quote from the president, Willard not only makes it his own, but he attaches it to a previously barbered quote that he and his party played with like dogs with a rubber bone throughout what is reckoned to be the most utterly truthless political convention of the modern era. And he does so full in the hope that the national media by and large will declare two-tie, all-tie, thereby getting him past the fact that he sounded like Scrooge before the spirits came to call.

(That partly redeems MMCT from having played the false equivalence card earlier in re: the Romney tape and the famous "guns and religion" tape from the president. The latter, at least, was a comparison of two guys who were both running for president.)

"The trick is figuring out how do we structure government systems that pool resources, and hence facilitate some redistribution, because I actually believe in redistribution, at least at a certain level, to make sure that everybody has a shot," Obama said. Though he does not now use the term "redistribution," Obama does broadly embrace the idea of government marshaling money from others to help the needy. "We've got some obligations to each other," he said this week on CBS's "Late Show with David Letterman." "And there's nothing wrong with us giving each other a helping hand."

It is somehow remarkable that the president "does broadly embrace the idea of government marshaling money from others to help the needy"? The hell? He also does "broadly embrace the idea of government marshaling money from others" to, like, have an Air Force.

The whole thing is ridiculous and, somewhere in that vestigial part of his brain that hasn't yet been assimilated, Romney knows it. The president was talking about middle-class programs that have been unremarkable since at least the Eisenhower administration. But Romney is no longer talking in English. He is talking in spells and incantations. "Redistribution" is a magic word that transforms Your government benefits into something to be protected from Those People who want to take them from you. It turns Your Medicare into Their welfare check and, therefore, they mooch while you earn. Moreover, it can fashion a candidate's rampant plutocratic buffoonery into a simple political debate. Abracarafalca!

"Mitt Romney and I are not running to redistribute the wealth, Mitt Romney and I are running to help Americans create wealth," Ryan said during a rally at the Piedmont Precision Machine Company in Danville.

Actually, of course, the last few decades have seen the greatest redistribution of wealth upwards in the nation's history, and these guys are campaigning on a plan that would accelerate that redistribution whole hog. But, let us also remind the zombie-eyed granny-starver from Wisconsin that he likely never would have gone to college if somebody hadn't redistributed some of my limited wealth in his direction through Social Security survivor's benefits.